Managing Personalities

Learning how to manage different personalities will help you communicate better which in turn helps you reduce your (and their) stress levels.

Usually if someone doesn’t agree with us, we think they’re wrong. And typically that causes us to feel a bit stressed.

You may not even be aware of this happening. But think about it. Don’t you feel calmer if the other person agrees with you, or goes along with your plan?

Don’t you get worked up until the other person can see your point of view? Then you calm down.

The same thing happens when people are different to what you are used to or what you expect. You will know that feeling of being a bit stressed when you arrive in a country where language, customs or even dress codes are different to your own.

If people look or act or speak differently to us, then we have to be ‘on guard’ in case they can’t be trusted.

And the “on guard feeling” is stress – it is an alert to the brain that something is different and you’d better be cautious until you’ve checked out what’s wrong.

What’s this got to do with managing different personalities?

A person’s behaviour is driven by a need to feel better – and to reduce their own level of stress.

HOWEVER, when the behaviour is inappropriate and impacts others in a negative way, we call it difficult behaviour.

But behaviour is always a means to an end, and when other people are acting in a disruptive or damaging way, they are not generally trying to hurt you – they are trying to create an atmosphere or an environment so they can feel better (in other words, reduce their feeling of stress).

If you can understand this in your partner/parent/child, you will have a different way of managing your frustration with their different or even difficult personality.

You won’t be able to change the way they behave, but you will be able to do things differently in order to manage the other person’s different personality. They end up feeling respected for who they are, and you end up feeling less annoyed and a bit more connected. It’s a win=win!